The Outer Limits (TV Series) Think Like a Dinosaur (2001) User Reviews

Dino Drivel and Balancing the Equation

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 30 October 2014]

Once again, the people of Earth have polluted the old planet. An alien race that looks like veloceraptors has offered them a solution. Eventually all Earthlings will be able to transfer to a planet where they can escape the problems. This focuses on a man who prepares the people to travel (to jump, as they say). He lost his wife to the polluters and his daughter is back on Earth. He meets a young woman who is about to engage in the process. Unfortunately, once a person leaves, the original body must be destroyed. This is usually no big deal because the body is just a shell. This jump, however, doesn't go as planned. While she makes it to the planet, her body is still alive and aware. To "balance the equation" the dinosaurs require the man to kill this woman. This is the complicating factor that must be dealt with. Of course, it's all about our humanity and what we must do for the greater good. It is presented in an interesting way and works pretty well.

I don't get the Enrico Colantoni jabs

[mbritton1776 · 8/10 · 15 June 2023]

I have seen Enrico Colantoni in many different programs and he is a dynamic actor. I think everyone is comparing the character he is playing in this to his acting. He is a bookish introvert, uncomfortable talking with people, who is grieving and has a terrible job. He played it right. I was more bothered by the alien dinos, I don't know that felt like something in a kids show. And there is no way the jumper who arrives at the destination is the actual person, it would have to be a clone, or perfect copy (from a scan!) So I don't know who would agree to the jump knowing they would be destroyed (murdered). Maybe they never know? Also, why wouldn't they have proof of some kind to show Kamala that she was actually on Gend, they all just take the dinos at their word?

Still a thought-provoking episode.

A pretty good episode

[mluinstra · 7/10 · 10 July 2022]

I think these other reviewers have it wrong. Personally, I felt that when the person is sent (or teleported) to the other planet that they are copied exactly. Since you can't have two exact copies of a person, the old copy is destroyed to "balance they equation".

Before teleporting the person they are covered in a liquid that numbs them completely so they feel nothing when destroyed by the laser beam thing.

Others here have said there is just a shell remains after the teleport but that can't be true, because when something went wrong and they could not confirm the teleportation, they undid the process and she was still her. Then they confirmed that the teleportation was successful and the girl must be destroyed to balance they equation. So a true copy is made.

The Dino's may have told him only a shell remains in order to make it easier for him to push the button and destroy the old copy but this was proven untrue.

The Outer Limits - Think Like a Dinosaur

[Scarecrow-88 · 6/10 · 23 August 2016]

I have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of Enrico Colantoni (just personally rubs me a little cold), but he's a handsome guy who is quite present on screen. Here he's a tormented, sad soul who lost his wife thanks to Earth's polluted air (yep, the green message is a consistent sci-fi theme seemingly open to be juiced from a fruit without end) and has now holed himself away with a dino member of a particular alien race of pacifists offering humans a chance to travel in a device which moves (or "jumps", the title used for the process) them to planets with breathable atmospheres and rich environs (so we can further pollute other worlds, right?). The jump process initiates a "body transfer" with a "shell" remaining for just a few seconds before it dies…called redundancy, there's "two of the same person", the version left on the station must be killed because you can't have a duplicate "doppelganger", the aliens won't allow it. A woman, Kamala (Linnea Sharples), working on a doctorate who will be studying on a planet with the lifeforms there, has a certain charm that appeals to the lonely and still-in-mourning Enrico. When the process is "disturbed" by a "miscalculation", the shell emerges alive while the "real Kamala" is on the planet as planned. The duplicate Kamala is almost identical in every way to the real version now gone to her intended destination, and when Enrico is told by the alien (Sillion, a rather abrupt, of-few-words dino creature who expects orders to be carried out as the transport device is a "gift to advance the human race") to kill her, he resists. Earth sends a Psych-Ops shrink (David Lewis) to monitor Enrico, much to his chagrin. But when Enrico has doubts about murdering Kamala, such a pleasant and lovely human being regardless of her status as a "redundant dup", he's placed in a tough spot: if he doesn't kill her, Sillion's race will relinquish the travel tech from the humans they so desperately need in order to rescue the remaining Earthlings still stuck on the poisonous-air planet. The central dilemma facing Enrico really has dramatic merit, and the "human race versus one life" argument never seems to lose its salt. While I'm not all that crazy about Enrico as an actor overall (he's very Jan Michael Vincent, to me), he is good enough here to parlay the terrible decision which is thrust upon him. Does he spare Kamala II and risk losing his daughter (back home with her grandparents) the chance to travel to another more habitable planet? His broken countenance at the end when Kamala I returns sums up how such a decision is a weight few would want to bare. The special effects and sets aren't bad at all, but this is more about the angst against Enrico and his bond with Kamala II than bells and whistles surrounding them.

A Delightful Off-the-Wall treat

[fred_loeper · 10/10 · 1 August 2019]

One of The Outer Limits best. Ethical dilemmas follow man into space in the face of new technologies. Humankind always must pay a price for advancement in exploration, technology, medicine, etc. Sometimes everyone bears a portion of the cost. Other times it is a lone representative of our species.

Great ethical question, terrible narrative execution.

[dafydd2277 · 4/10 · 1 January 2022]

The question they considered, about whether or not a human being deserves to live when an exact copy exists, is a great thought experiment. Unfortunately, @Enrico Colantoni couldn't sell the emotional stakes like he needed to, and writing was horribly stilted and artificial. Would anyone really describe a living cubicle on a lunar base as someone's "chanbers?" Really?